Rural businesses yesterday dismissed an extra £24m announced by the government to help firms affected by the foot and mouth crisis, and made plans to demonstrate outside parliament tomorrow.

The environment minister, Michael Meacher, announced the creation of a recovery fund to help small and medium-sized businesses in areas worst hit by closed footpaths and the absence of tourists.

Businesses would receive up to £15,000 in grants for marketing support, skills improvement and IT investment to help them adapt. There will also be grants to meet interest repayments on borrowings caused by the crisis, which is costing English tourism alone £140m a week.

Mr Meacher said: "Small tourism and other country businesses are essential to the health of the rural economy. We want to ensure that viable businesses can survive to help land recovery in these areas.

"This fund should provide direct help to up to 10,000 small and medium-sized businesses, and wider benefits to all rural businesses affected by foot and mouth."

The total offered to rural businesses since the crisis began is more than £250m.

But yesterday rural business owners said no money had reached them, and that the government's idea of skills seminars and so on was a farce; they wanted cash compensation and the opening of footpaths.

Deborah Cowin, a member of the self-styled Cumbria Crisis Alliance, is a gallery director and bespoke jeweller in Keswick; she had taken one order since March, she said.

"It is an insult to offer us seminars," she said. "We are all from thriving, growing businesses. We do not need special advice. We need cash aid. We need to retain staff.

"All we have seen so far is three months' hardship rate relief. The government is nibbling around the edge of the problem and we are becoming a forgotten strata of society. We are dispossessed."

Ms Cowin said rural proprietors from Cumbria, Devon and Wales would demonstrate at the lack of government support in London tomorrow.

Steve Binder, director of the Newlands adventure centre in Keswick, said he had taken taken £9.87 since March, compared with £25,000 last year. He said: "We just see money being poured into the wrong places. I have very little faith in the ability of the government to target money directly. We never see it."

Rosemary Keen, a guesthouse owner in Ambleside, said of the government's help so far: "This money they are talking about is fictitious. I haven't seen anybody who has got any of this money yet, apart from the rate relief."

Judy Carless said her restaurant in Exmoor national park had been closed since February: "This is an absolute waste of time. It is going to have to be cash aid. I don't see how else they can do it. We have been totally forgotten."

The extra funding came as an animal sanctuary owner in Dumfries and Galloway and a farmer on Exmoor launch court cases to stop their animals being culled.

Juanita Wilson of the Mossburn animal centre in Hightae, said she had put £10,000 of personal savings into a fight to prevent 14 goats and three sheep being culled by slaughtermen directed by the Scottish executive. A local vet had given animals the all clear, she said.

"I'm prepared to go to the court of session in Edinburgh. We will no doubt lose, but I have been assured by my QC that we can take our case to the Lords and the European court of human rights." Some 75 people have surrounded the centre to block entry.

Christopher Thomas-Everard, whose 980 cattle were due to be the first slaughtered on Exmoor, yesterday vowed to fight the Ministry of Agriculture in court.

The animals were ordered to be culled after a visit 12 days ago from a de-horning contractor from Wilvelscombe, which has several foot and mouth cases. Mr Thomas-Everard said his cattle had been declared healthy by vets.